David Yencken


David George Druce Yencken AO was a builder, businessman, academic and heritage practitioner in Australia.

Family and early history

David Yencken was born in Berlin, his father was an Australian-born British Army officer and Diplomat Arthur Ferdinand Yencken. and his mother was Mary Joyce Russell. They were married on 5 June 1925 at St. Margarets, Westminster. The family moved several times so that Yencken spent his early years between Berlin, Cairo, Rome, Madrid, and then when the families of embassy staff were evacuated due to the Spanish Civil War, he lived in Australia from 1940 to 1942, then returned to Spain and then to school in England. His father died in an air crash in Spain in May 1944. David had an elder brother Dr. John Yencken who was an Australian Scientist. David attended school in England and Australia, and was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree by the University of Cambridge majoring in History.

Professional career

In his early 20s Yencken decided on a short visit to Australia, arriving in Sydney via Canada in 1954, and then drove to Melbourne in a borrowed car. He soon decided to stay, and his first business venture was Brummels Gallery in South Yarra, which focussed on contemporary Modernist Australian painting, sculpture and prints.
"I opened the gallery in 1956 in partnership with Pat Collins, the owner of the coffee shop below the gallery. The gallery was devoted to Australian painting and at the time of its opening was one of only two with this focus in Melbourne. Although I didn't run the gallery for long, it was for me a significant experience…" The first gallery of this type, Australian Galleries in Collingwood, had opened just five months earlier.
During his travels through Canada he was introduced to "several wonders of the new world: hamburgers, three-minute car washes and motels"; motels were something not seen in the UK or Australia in the mid 50s, and he decided to build one. Buying land on the highway at the edge of Bairnsdale, he opened one of the first motels in Australia, in 1957, the Mitchell Valley Motel, designed by architects Mockridge Stahle & Mitchell. The success of this venture led to him being approached to part own, develop and operate another in Merimbula, NSW, The Black Dolphin, which opened in 1961, and was designed by noted modernist architect and critic Robin Boyd. The project architect was a young Graeme Gunn, and the use of undressed tree-trunk posts, natural finishes, and native planting was an early example of the bush aesthetic in Australian architecture.
After discussions with Robin Boyd, in 1965 Yencken co-founded Merchant Builders Pty Ltd., with architect Graeme Gunn, landscape designer Ellis Stones and timber merchant John Ridge. The philosophy of the company was to create homes emphasising the unique charachteristics of the Australian landscape with a vision of creating architect-designed houses that were at project home prices. In 1969 the firm's first foray into larger concerns was the Elliston Estate in Rosanna, where a sense of flowing native landscape on an existing subdivision was created, and a range of house designs by four architects - Charles Duncan, Daryl Jackson & Evan Walker, McGlashan Everist and Graeme Gunn. They then pioneered the concept of cluster housing, where groups of homes share a communal landscaped setting of dense native planting, firstly at Winter Park in Doncaster, built 1970-74, and Vermont Park in 1977, which included a clubhouse and swimming pool. Winter Park led the Victorian Government to introduce the Cluster Titles Act 1974, and in 1975 it received a citation in the Royal Australian Institute of Architect's Housing Awards.
In 1968, Yencken commissioned Gunn to design a holiday house called Baronda, in what is now Nelson Lagoon Mimosa Rocks National Park in NSW, created in part by his gift of the property to the state in 1973.
Merchant Builders won three Victorian Architectural Medals and several other architectural awards, including the inaugural Robin Boyd Environmental Award for changing the face of residential Melbourne in 1972.
Yencken also founded the planning and landscape architect firm Tract Consultants, around the same time, holding positions of Chairman and Managing Director between 1971 and 79. Tract was often the landscape designer for homes built by for Merchant Builders, including Vermont Park.

Public service

Following a commitment generally to better preserve the environment by the Whitlam Labour Government in the early 1970s, a Committee of Inquiry into the National Estate was established in 1973, with Yencken as one of 6 members, which produced the seminal Report on the National Estate in April 1974. The National Estate was broadly defined, evaluating equally the natural environment, Aboriginal places, and historical structures and landscapes. Yencken was then appointed Chairman of the Interim Committee on the National Estate, which led to the formation of the Australian Heritage Commission which he then chaired from 1975-81, with their first meeting on 27 July 1976. The main work of the Commission was the creation of the Register of the National Estate, a comprehensive overview of the Australian heritage places, which had more than 13,000 listings when it abolished by the Howard government in 2004. The Register was innovative for including sites of natural and historic value, as of equal importance as the built environment. In regard to architectural heritage, Yencken said that :
"We collectively reached the view that the only way to avoid bias in listing caused by temporarily prevailing architectural likes and dislikes, was to seek to list the best examples of each style period."
He was appointed Secretary of the Ministry for Planning and Environment 1982–87, by the Minister for Planning Evan Walker in the new Cain Labor Government. During his time he oversaw a number of major initiatives including; a new Metropolitan Policy and State Conservation Strategy; a comprehensive plan for the redevelopment of the Melbourne CBD and Southbank; numerous legislative changes; and local planning initiatives.
Professor Yencken oversaw the initial moves towards the rejuvenation of Southbank. At the time the precinct was made up of old factories and warehouses, and it was widely felt that the city had 'turned its back on the Yarra River'.
A lot of our work in the initial instance focused on the central area of Melbourne because there was such a sense of neglect and lack of policy direction
This lack of effective action was being expressed in papers like The Age on a very regular basis. We had a big program and that included Southbank. The first changes, the Southbank Promenade and the Evan Walker Footbridge, were completed after he left the Ministry.
In 1988, he developed the concept of The Creative City, which has since become a global movement reflecting a new planning paradigm for cities. It was first described in his article 'The Creative City', published in the literary journal Meanjin. In this article Yencken argues that while cities must be efficient and fair, a creative city must also be one that is committed to fostering creativity among its citizens and to providing emotionally satisfying places and experiences for them.
Yencken served as the inaugural Chairman of Australia ICOMOS in 1976, was joint leader of the Australian Delegation to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee in 1988 and 1981 and his other public roles included the Prime Minister's Urban Design Taskforce in 1994 and 1995, chair of the Design Committee of the Australia Council for the Arts, and President and later Patron of the Australian Conservation Foundation.
Yenken held the Elisabeth Murdoch Chair of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning from 1988 to 1997, then was Professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, and later Professor Emeritus all at the University of Melbourne.

Writings and awards

Yencken has written or edited seven books, essays, journal articles and conference proceedings. His publications include :
Yencken has received the following awards: